utgard14
Retired gunslinger Randolph Scott has hung up his guns for to become a newspaper reporter. He returns to his hometown to find old friend David Brian has become a corrupt politician. This is a western so you can bet Scott won't be stopping Brian by writing scathing articles.An obvious but watchable oater. Scott fans will enjoy it most. He's good as usual. The baddie's played by David Brian, an actor I'm not a big fan of. He was a stage actor that was brought to Hollywood by close friend Joan Crawford. Some of his biggest roles were Crawford movies. I always found his performances weak. He has a habit of chewing scenery but lacks the screen presence to make that fun to watch. Ray Neal, the sheriff from Bonanza, plays Brian's partner in crime. Phyllis Thaxter is the female lead. She's fine but nothing special. Use of obvious sets for outdoor shooting as well as lots of stock footage makes the film look cheap. It's not a great western but a decent time-passer.
JoeytheBrit
Randolph Scott plays a pacifist who has given up the gun for the pen – or the printing press – and he's not entirely convincing, perhaps simply because we're so used to seeing him blazing away at the bad guys in the seemingly endless succession of Westerns he made in the 1940s and 50s. He returns to Fort Worth with his business partner to start up a local newspaper with the prime objective of ridding the dying town of slimy bad guy Clavenger (Ray Teal) who is riding roughshod over the place and driving away the peace-loving residents. Scott's character also re-unites with Blair Lunsford, one of film history's more ambiguous villains in the reassuringly swaggering form of David Brian. Lunsford is capitalising on Clavenger's terrorising of the locals by buying their property cheap when they decide to move out.The story is fairly unusual and not without interest, but it's Brian's character who leaves the most lasting impression. Is he a bad guy, or just an ambitious man making the most of the misery of others without actually contributing to that misery? The film never really tells us, and doesn't really seem able to make up its mind. He genuinely likes Scott's ramrod-straight good guy, and only turns when he finds himself backed into a corner. Anyway, despite its rather unique storyline, the film's conclusion is fairly predictable.
MartinHafer
Randolph Scott was such a wonderful actor that his films were always at least a notch above the rest. While this is about average for a Scott film, it's clearly head and shoulders better than a typical western. Even with the overuse of old footage from another Warner Brothers western (DODGE CITY, 1939), the film still manages to shine. Most of the old footage works just fine, though some is indeed grainier and a few times actors from the second film change hat and clothes when they switch to actors from the old film!! Pretty sloppy...but it can be overlooked.Scott plays a tough newspaper man who moves back to his old home town of Fort Worth. The city is dying due to two men. One is an obvious bully and leader of a gang of thugs who break laws with impunity. The other, played by Film Noir favorite David Brian, is an opportunist who is buying up land right and left--at pennies on the dollar from people who are leaving the violent town in droves. While the first guy is an obvious baddie, Brian is a cypher. Scott thinks Brian is evil and a megalomaniac but again and again throughout the film Brian proves he really is interested in the town. Could Scott be wrong? And, can Scott print the truth without getting his head blown off instead?! The film does well because the plot is more original than most westerns. Also, Brian is a very good heavy--not as predictable and nasty as most. Overall, this is a must-see for Scott fans and would be enjoyable to most.
zardoz-13
"Abilene Town" director Edwin L. Marin teamed up with Randolph Scott in the fourth of their seven westerns for the 80-minute, Technicolor, town-taming tale "Fort Worth," with David Brian as Scott's chief adversary Blair Lunsford. The bluff Brian cultivated a reputation in the 1950s playing splendidly-apparelled villains, and he goes face-to-face and bullet-to-bullet with our stalwart hero. Ray Teal, who achieved fame as Sheriff Roy Coffee on TV's "Bonanza," makes a memorable impression as unsavory second-string villain Gabe Clevenger. Actually, Clevenger is more interesting than Lunsford because the former proves to be such a scoundrel. "Colorado Territory" scenarist John Twist wrote some incisive and catchy dialogue for this oater; earlier, Twist penned two other Randolph Scott westerns, "Man Behind the Gun" and "Best of the Badmen." Scott's sturdy performance, succulent dialogue, and enough smoking gunplay qualify this as an adequate western that holds its own without breaking new ground. The use of interior sets for exterior sets detracts from its' overall production value."Fort Worth" opens with stock footage of a wagon train bound for San Antonio trundling past a scenic lake. Ned Britt (Randolph Scott) and his associates, veteran newspaperman Ben Garvin (Emerson Treacy of "Adam's Rib") and typesetter/reporter Luther Wicks (Dick Jones of "Rocky Mountain") are heading for San Antonio to set up shop. Britt and Garvin own a chain of newspapers in Kansas and have acquired a sterling reputation for themselves, even in the eyes of Clevenger and his hoodlums. Meanwhile, during the trip, Ned has befriended an orphaned urchin, Toby Nickerson (Pat Mitchell of "Northwest Territory"), that he treats as if he were his son. They go for rides on the prairie.A woman on horseback meets the wagon train in the middle of nowhere and receives permission to join it. Flora Talbot (Phyllis Thaxter of "The Breaking Point") is traveling back to Fort Worth. Once Flora falls in with the wagon train, she strikes up a conversation with another woman who is driving one of the wagons, and they provide important exposition about the larger-than-life hero—Ned Britt. According to Flora, Britt rode alone into Texas about 20 years ago. She points out that his only friend was his six-gun and it kept him alive and fed. Initially, Flora's description of Britt clashes with what the woman driving the wagon knows about him. She claims that Britt has nothing but contempt for firearms and believes that guns are only for heathens that cannot read. On the other hand, Flora remembers Britt as "a one-man arsenal" who rode off to join the Southern cavalry.Meanwhile, Ned and Toby ride double beyond the wagon train and spot a cattle herd bound for Dodge City; Gabe Clevenger (nefarious Ray Teal) owns this herd. Clevenger hates Britt, but he respects Britt as a man of integrity and he knows better than to make a martyr out of the newspaperman. Clevenger has no desire to play into Ned's hands by provoking him or any other 'quill pusher.' One of Clevenger's trigger-happy drovers, Happy Jack Harvey (Zon Murray of "The Great Plane Robbery") invades the wagon train and pulls his six-gun on Britt. Our hero warns the drover that a shot will stampede the herd. He fires a shot anyway and the herd overruns the camp and tramples helpless little Tobey. This recalls a similar urchin in the Errol Flynn oater "Dodge City" who had to die before law and order could be established. Toby's death pits Ned squarely against Gabe Clevenger, but it doesn't keep our hero from denouncing violence to settle violence. Says he,". . . the presses are a thousand times more potent than gunpowder." Predictably, Ned will change his mind and resort to the six-gun.Initially, Britt refuses to settle in Fort Worth, but Lunsford convinces him that the town has a future. Britt and he start out as friends, but their relationship changes as Lunsford reveals his true colors. First, unbeknownst to Britt, Lunsford stole his girlfriend, Amy Brooks (Helena Carter of "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye") away from him during the Civil War when Lunsford took risks selling his beef to the South but turns a profit. Second,he has been secretly obtaining options for real estate from owners who cannot make their payments. Eventually, Britt and he wind up at odds with each other, though occasionally they team up to thwart Clevenger's gang. Inevitably, ranch lady Flora Talbot comes between them, but if you've seen enough of these sagebrushers, you'll know that Scott's Britt need not break a sweat about it. "Fort Worth" concerns Britt's use of a six-shooter to solve his problems. He doesn't like the idea of gunplay, but he resorts to it.The gunfight at the stockyard when the sheriff, his deputy, and Lunsford try to arrest Clevenger is the best thing about "Fort Worth." Shorty (Bob Steele) gets the drop on everybody with a rifle as Britt approaches the stockyard. Britt believes that the sheriff has Clevenger at gunpoint. Instead, things are the other way around. This is when Lunsford and Britt perform a feat that enables them to disarm themselves on orders from the badmen and sling their pistols to each other and then open fire on the villains. Clevenger and his cohorts scatter.Later, Ben Garvin is found murdered in his newspaper office with a knife stuck in his back. Ned straps on his six-guns, marches down the street and guns down three of Clevenger's henchmen without blinking an eye. Moreover, he violates the western hero's code of waiting until the villains clear leather before he draws on them! "Fort Worth" isn't anything sensational, but it is solidly virile.
